Mounted combat issue

[bkgeno]

Playing a kobold (small) Champion (LG of Kurgess) with the cavalier archtype, mounted on a mature riding drake (large creature), armed a blade ally infused lance. My opponent is a goblin (small) on a warg (medium) with a horsechopper (reach). We noticed that, in the RAW, I am unable to hit the goblin with my lance due to being on a large mount, but the goblin can hit me with his horsechopper as long as there is a single space between us.

Is this correct or did we miss some rule that makes the mounted combat rules make sense?

[thenobledrake]

This is correct.

And it is a rule that fails to make sense by trying to represent reality; you are limited to only attacking squares adjacent to your Large mount because you are needing to choke up on the haft or balance yourself and that limits the angles you can attack from, so the distance your weapon can effectively cover can be limited.

I.e. you're tucking the lance to hold it well in one hand with your other on the reigns, so you can't get quite as much distance on an attack as you could if you were on your feet able to hold the end of the haft with the other hand and get full arm extension plus leaning into it behind your lance.

Medium mounts not having the same issue basically comes down to triangles (shorter height means shorter hypotenuse at the same distance; 5-foot high mount (medium, yes it's not literally that height, but this is how the game measures), 10-foot distance to target = 11.18-foot from saddle to target, but change that to 10-foot high mount (large, still not literally that height, I know) and it's 14.14-foot from saddle to target)

[bkgeno]

...Great, so the game actively punishes you for some choices, and doesn't give you a warning unless you spend an hour looking up EVERY possible rule.

Thanks for the fast response, but I really wish they had gone for sensibility rather than pure mathematics on their rules.

[thenobledrake]

...oh for...

If you actually spent an hour, or anything near that, looking up rules for mounted combat before you got to the section that is labeled, in big bold letters and listed in the index "Mounted Combat" that is not even remotely the game (or the authors of the game) as cause.

And the rule is sensible, don't use me illustrating why it's sensible via math against the authors of the game - they probably just thought "horse = Large long so not as much reach as Large tall. Rider + horse = Large long still, so reach weapon can't have same effective reach as Large tall usually have." or "being on a mount limits how you can hold and maneuver a weapon, so if the mount is big enough it makes sense that a long weapon wouldn't feel as long" both of which are perfectly reasonable despite how much more likely it'd be for someone to land at the correct rule without actually reading any rules if reach weapons were always just "I can attack from 2 spaces away instead of 1"